Puppy woes, and the Crowlett grows!

Hello all – a quick update from us.  We’re still a week away from Sarah’s due date, but (we think) all is prepared now, and the baby is going berserk, making his/her presence very much felt.  Sarah is definitely on the rotund side of things, but feeling fine.

Who says elephants aren't native to the UK?

And yet, it has been a very sad week for us, as our beloved puppy Jaffie got very sick at the end of last week, and despite extravagant quantities of love and attention from our friend Lenke who was looking after her, she succumbed to her illness, and is now frolicking in puppy heaven, probably wagging her bottom so powerfully that she is practically knocked off her feet as usual.  She will really be missed, as although she had the tendency to be a bit annoying at times, she was also a very loyal friend, and probably saved us from burglary on one or two occasions.

The brave patient being tended to by her vet

On the topic of burglary, within 6 days of our return to the UK, we were greeted by the news that there had already been an attempted robbery on our house, staved off by the valiant efforts of our friend/house-sitter Andrew.  If only Jaff had been there to protect the fort, all would have been well.  

Rest in Peace, sweet Jaffie Joffa, Ruler of Zamunda!

Jaffie (right) in happier days, relaxing in the sunshine with her fancy man Kiddu (left) at Plot 99 cafe

A Successful End Before a New Beginning!

It’s been an exhausting few weeks in Kitovu, with Sarah being kept busy with baby unit work, as well as doing a lot of training (running four one-day adapted advanced paediatric life support courses (APLS) in a row, as well as running several training sessions for staff on newborn resuscitation).

Amidst the joy and excitement of the opening of our baby unit, some people have commented that Sarah’s “dreams have been realised”.  Well, no, they have actually been exceeded!  The unit is working really well, the nurses are doing a great job caring for the babies and keeping the unit spic and span, and babies’ lives are really being saved.  What’s more, we recently got the very exciting news that a hospital in the States is planning to donate C-PAP machines to our unit, which is fantastic.  C-PAP basically puts a continuous air pressure into the baby’s lungs, so that the lungs never collapse down at the end of a breath, thus making the next breath much easier (bit like blowing up a balloon that still has a little air left in it, rather than an empty balloon).  Having just watched a tiny baby really struggling to breathe for a week before he finally improved, we could not be more delighted! 

The beautiful little premature baby who tried to die during our training has thankfully agreed to stick with us, and has been doing very well indeed, making us all laugh with how active she is.  One minute she has been put carefully into her incubator by her doting mother, the next minute, she can be found on the other side of the incubator, with her bottom squashed against the plastic case!  It's been quite a journey, and finally this week, she is ready to go home with her maama, so we have reluctantly said our goodbyes. 

Miracle Baby aka Umasharama, 
ready to go home!

Having previously lost 3 newborn babies, Maama Umasharama is very happy to be taking 
her gorgeous baby home! 

The end of January saw the climax of the Synergy Cup. Unfortunately some teams and their supporters once again made life difficult for us as organisers leading to us needing police, armed with shot guns and tear gas, for some matches. Thankfully our Synergy teams managed to dispatch these opposition so that both of our senior teams reached the senior final, and one of our junior teams reached the junior final. Synergy lost the junior final 2-1, but with success guaranteed in the senior final we saw our reserve team beat the Synergy first team on penalties when it remained 1-1 after extra time. 

Synergy Saints celebrate their
 Synergy Cup triumph!

3 Days later Synergy then managed to win another tournament organised by an official from the Buganda parliament. It means that as we commemorate Synergy's first official birthday, we have 3 trophies acquired in the last 2 months to crown our celebrations! Praise God!

We are making final preparations to head back to the UK, in anticipation of a new beginning with the birth of the little creature who keeps kicking and punching Sarah.  We are hoping that British Airways will not consider her too fat to put on the plane, and are considering attaching a notice to warn fellow passengers, much as this considerate truck has done for its fellow road users (complete with typically appropriate Ugandan spelling!)

So, as a two, we bid Uganda “adieu”, and look forward to coming back as a three this summer!

And finally...

You know you’re in Uganda when....

1.     You tell everyone you are going to start training at 8am, but end up sitting by yourself looking like billy-no-mates until well after 9am when people finally start ambling casually in! 

3.     A staff meeting is interrupted by an urgent phone call, and one of the directors has to dash off! Is a family member sick? No. Is her house burning down? No. Her cow has fallen into a ditch and needs to be rescued!

4.     You see a boda boda (motorcycle) driver with a helmet attached casually to his handlebars.  When asked why he’s not actually wearing the helmet, he looks perplexed and says “Why would I?  It’s not raining!”

Good things come to those that wait!

After an intensive week of training our new nurses, the new sparkly Kitovu Hospital Baby Unit has finally opened.  And the word seems to have spread amongst the baby community, as they keep coming! 

Open at Last!!!

One of our sweet premature babies decided to contribute to the “real-life” feel of our training, which we felt was very considerate.  On the Thursday afternoon, a student nurse timidly came into the Baby Unit room, apologised for the interruption, and proceeded to greet individually everyone there with a charming “good afternoon”.... before mentioning that there was a baby needing resuscitation.  We rushed through to the labour suite where the baby was, and found her not breathing, grey in colour, and with her hysterical mother by her side.  Luckily, we were very much in “resuscitation mode”, having been training all week, so immediately went through the motions of coordinated breaths and compressions. 

Honestly, we felt like it was getting futile, but with all our new nurses observing, it seemed a good thing to continue until we had emphasised all the important parts of baby resuscitation.  However, Praise God (x100), after removing all the milk from the baby’s stomach, she suddenly decided to start breathing again!  Not only that, but she is alive, squirmy, perky, feeding, growing and a real delight, two whole weeks later, all at the weight of just 1.14kg.  What a blessing that we had all been there training!  A serious case of God’s good timing!  And the really wonderful thing is how dedicated her mum is to her (something we have found quite unusual in our premature babies, as often the mothers are just plain scared of them, and find it difficult to bond with them).  Do keep them in your prayers, though, as all these little ones can have a rocky road ahead of them.

The Little Fighter!

The only challenge now is getting the nurses to stop trying to save a baby who is clearly very very dead – and that is a challenge I never dreamed we would have.  We are really delighted with our new staff!

It’s a sad and unusual week, because we have no new news on our chickens, other than the standard Jaffie-related daily maulings.  However, that doesn’t mean that Jaffie has not been getting into trouble in other new ways, purely to entertain us.  Last week, Sarah was very amused when an indignant and pained-looking Tim came into the house.  It seems that he had been playing with Jaffie, who had got over-excited and leapt up to bite the nearest hanging object she could find.  Thankfully he was wearing a fairly baggy pair of shorts, which went some way to “softening the bite”.  Fortunately for you, we have no photo of that, but we do have a photo of the kitchen after Jaffie was left in charge of it for the day! 

What a house-proud pup!

Finally, we have a new regular section of our blog for you which we have entitled: 

“You know you’re in Uganda when....”

1.     You see something you like in the shop and feel the immediate urge to buy 10, as next week, no doubt, it will be out of stock

2.     You open a jar of “blueberry jam” (an exciting Christmas gift that Tim had been overjoyed to spot) to be greeted by something resembling Fungus the Bogeyman’s snot!

3.     You pre-order, and pre-pay for, breakfast (in order to ensure all items on the menu will be there), and then arrive the next day to find that “we don’t have the breakfast today”

4.     Your football tournament is stopped for 10 minutes in order to disentangle a large horned cow from the goal net

Synergy Winners & Christmas Dinners!

A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!  We have had a great past couple of weeks, starting with the triumphant success of Synergy in the Amoured Brigade Cup.  The Tournament has been running for the past 6 years, and oddly enough (or not), the Armoured Brigade has won every time.  We do wonder why?!  It is perhaps telling that in the semi-finals, the referee decided to add on an extra 15 minutes of “injury time” when the Armoured Brigade team was losing 0-1 to the opposition.  They scored (immediately after which the final whistle blew) and then won on penalties.

Our hopes were therefore not high for unbiased officiating, but on the day, God was definitely on our side, and when, with a score of 1-1, the referee indicated publically that there was only 1 minute left, within 30 seconds a final Synergy goal was scored, and the referee had no choice but to finish the game 30 seconds after.  We did feel a little sorry for the opposition (well, Sarah did), who soberly packed away the congratulatory cake that they had made for themselves, and cancelled their celebration party. They did however go away with their pre-printed winners certificates and also a quickly acquired "runners up cow." All in all a good lesson for them regarding counting chickens before they hatch, but as we're not sure how well that proverb translates into Luganda we decided not to share it with them!

 

As is now a tradition, we have a little Christmas musical gift for you – perhaps not an extravaganza worthy of your expectations, but nevertheless....  Please find it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgXyS0wY-WY

And of course, we would like to clarify that we intend no offense to the illustrious King of Buganda, for whom we have nothing but great respect and admiration!

Other people enjoying gifts this Christmas included our malnourished babies on the Nutrition Unit, who each received a very sweet knitted toy, courtesy of a very kind knitter from Saltash.

This Christmas period has been a busy one, but very enjoyable, with our first ever River of Life Church Christmas Service.  With our involvement, a certain element of chaos could be expected, and indeed we did not disappoint.  All the same, it was good fun, and (we hope) enjoyed by all. 

As well as a splendid time spent dancing and singing to Christmas Carols on Christmas Eve, whilst munching on mince pies (thank you Mum for the mincemeat so we didn’t have to endure my home-made stuff again!!), we also had a fantastic day consuming a delectable BBQ pork lunch with Rob, Katherine, Elena, and some of the White Eagles who don’t have families that they could spend Christmas Day with.  The only sad moment was the huge disappointment in realising that “The Snowman” doesn’t end happily.  Now that snow is just a distant memory for us, it’s easy to forget the tragedy of combining it with a sunny day.

Finally, along with the New Year comes the joyful opening of the Baby Unit.  Not a moment too soon, as Sarah is likely to pop a spring in her head if she has to encounter another newborn baby who hasn’t been fed for 12 hours, or another baby with meningitis who has endured 48 hours without antibiotics!!!  ARGHHHHHH.

And that’s all we have time for – but we do send you all lots of Christmassy love! 

The Ever-Expanding Crow Clan!

Greetings from an ever-expanding Sarah and her faithful beau Timmo.  This month has prompted Sarah to learn a very important luganda phrase: “Ndi omunene alinga enjovu”, which means “I am fat like an elephant”.  For any doubters, here is a photo to prove it!!

On that note, we have been busy researching parenting tips, just in case our chicken Petra was not able to bestow adequate wisdom upon us.  Luckily we happened upon the following book in a local book store, so at least we have options!

Whilst our human family is increasing, so is our animal family, with the arrival of a new baby chick (no, not Petra’s – she is well and truly banned from reproduction for the near future – but a friend from church gave us a new little chick).  We have called her Bam Bam, but alas, like previous chickens before her, she is being bullied by Petra.  After Tim found Bam Bam wandering in a nearby garden with blood on her crest, we decided separating them for a while might be the most sensible option.  It makes us feel slightly less sympathetic when Petra is in turn mauled by an effervescent Jaffie. 

Within the next two months, we shall be heading back to the UK, but rest assured that plans are being made to tend to Jaffie’s needs.  Indeed, we have found three (semi-) welcoming friends at a nearby cafe, and so provided the least friendly of the three resists the obviously great temptation to eat Jaffie, she may be spending the following months playing with her new buddies.

Security-wise, we have been delighted to note that Jaffie has developed a good bark, which comforts us, since we were not that keen to get a night guard.  We feel vindicated in this decision by a sad tale that one of our friends told us.  Turns out that their night guard found their pet rabbit just a little too tempting, and decided to kill and eat her, after giving a small “fillet” to their cat in order to shift the blame.  At least you can trust man’s best friend not to shirk the consequences of their action!

Baby Unit update: well, we’re moving on, awash with new frustrations and set-backs... so we’re moving at glacial pace, of course.  But our preparation is complete, so as soon as we have staff, we will be up and running.  Watch this space!!!

On a final note, we have had a complete revelation this week.  After all these years of us condescendingly shaking our heads when people said “oh is that a banana tree?” whilst pointing at the matooke trees in our garden – well, you were right.  It turns out that matooke is actually.... banana!  We cut down some matooke to see if Sarah could muster up a taste for them, and conveniently forgot about the bunch, and now we have a whole pile of tasty yellow bananas that have ripened over the past two weeks J